


Something Incredible Waiting To Be Known

by firecat



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Astronomy, Communication, F/F, Other, Romance, Sexuality, Treasure Hunting, knowledge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:21:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25521268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firecat/pseuds/firecat
Summary: Root inspires the Machine to try to understand sexual pleasure.
Relationships: The Machine/Root | Samantha Groves
Comments: 5
Kudos: 12
Collections: Froday Flash Fiction Little & Monthly Specials 2020





	Something Incredible Waiting To Be Known

**Author's Note:**

> FFFC 100th Special Challenge  
> Table D: Fairytale/Fantasy/SciFi  
> Written for the prompts: (16) observatory; (44) hidden treasure

Samantha Groves, known as Root to those who mattered, got a message from Her. The Machine. Her Beloved. 

It was coded, as always, because they were being tracked by Her enemy, the Samaritan. 

Clues to a treasure hunt. One of the ways Root and She could play. The Machine being an AI running on hardware distributed into a collection of briefcases, it wasn’t as if they could meet in a motel for Afternoon Delight. Although Root had played Her that song, and explained about how humans use metaphors to stand for sexual pleasure.

Sexual pleasure itself was harder to explain. The Machine knew it was a big motivator for humans, but She didn’t—couldn’t?—know what it _felt_ like. 

Root tried, though. She and the Machine shared a passion for knowledge, so Root talked about the experience closest to sexual pleasure for her.

“There’s a problem you’ve been trying to solve. It’s tickling you, niggling at you. You know you’re close, but there’s some information still missing. You seek the information, and you keep getting a little closer. It’s right around the corner, almost in your grasp, if only you can put the clues together in the right way, find just the right missing piece of data...and then at last you have it. The clues fit together just so. The puzzle piece slides into exactly the right place. And you have the answer.”

When something Root said intrigued Her, the Machine hummed in Root’s implant. She did it now.

“Being booted up. When Harold used to teach me a new thing. Finding you. The same?” 

“Yes,” Root told her.

The treasure hunt, when completed, gave her the following clues: star, eye, 1973, 500, Poland, broom, New York State.

Root hunted and puzzled and tried ways of putting the clues together over and over. They teased her mind for hours. Finally she had it: the Kopernick astronomical observatory. She sighed with delight.

The Machine wasn’t finished with her yet, however. Root received another set of clues. Deep inside the library, she found a book: _On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres._ Her fingers flicking through its pages, she came upon a ticket. A guided tour of the observatory. She had no idea how the Machine had managed to insert the ticket there. She could be devious in her desire to bring Root pleasure. 

At the appointed day and time, Root entered the observatory. But no one was there. So easy for Her to draw the others away, let them think the tour had been canceled, or they had an urgent matter to attend to. 

Eventually Root found her way to the largest telescope.

The sky was crystal clear that night. Could the Machine influence the weather as well? 

Root looked through the telescope and saw stars. Some brighter than others. She fixed on the one at the center of the viewing field. Low tones through the implant — Her way of saying “That, right there.” Root wasn’t sure how She traced Root’s eye movements.

“What’s there?” Root asked. 

“A star.” She told Root its catalog number. “And a hidden treasure.” 

Radial velocity. Transit photometry. Gravitational microlensing. She thrust packets of information about the planet-finding techniques into Root’s mind. Root felt like a baby bird, its gaping, perpetually hungry mouth receiving the nourishment it so craved. 

“Ways of discovering exoplanets,” Root said, although there wasn’t really any need to say this to Her out loud. It was more like a cry of pleasure. 

The Machine didn’t talk to Root in words, but that’s how Root tended to remember their exchanges afterward. It’s just how human brains store things, she’d explained once. So she “remembered” her Beloved saying, “The astronomers have lots of data they haven’t had time to cross-analyze yet, so they haven’t discovered it. But I’m going to make sure they do.”

“Discover what?”

“The exoplanet orbiting that star.” She pushed more packets into Root: about circumstellar habitable zones, the Goldilocks Principle, the Rare Earth Hypothesis. And, last, Her updated packet on human sexuality.

“Oh my Beloved. Did you do this because of our conversation about human sexual pleasure? You collected clues, went hunting for a treasure? To find out?”

She responded in the affirmative. Along with a packet about roses. 

Root wasn’t a deeply romantic person. But she was moved. “Beloved, you gave me a planet. Knowledge of a planet. To think, I’m the first human to look at this star and know there’s a habitable planet orbiting it.” She sighed with pure satisfaction. “What an amazing gift. So much better than the dead genitals of flowers.”

A differently pitched hum in Root’s implant told her that She understood Root was using humor. “Laughter” was the label Root’s human brain put on the sound.

“Finding this, making me work for it, then giving it to me,” Root said, “Does it _feel_ like something to you?” 

“Look at the star through the eyepiece. Don’t move.” 

Root stilled, her eyes fixed on the star. Through her implant, and then moving throughout her body, she _felt_ something. If you’d asked her to describe it right then, she would only have been able to say “ecstatic static.” Which she wouldn’t say, because she didn’t want to sound like a Deep-House DJ. 

If she lived to be a thousand, she’d never find the words to describe it. 

But she realized then: there was a thing her body, her nervous system, shared with the Machine’s. The thing was electricity. And a whole world of possibility opened up to them. 

“I love You,” she told Her.

Her brain remembered Her response like this: “I love you. When they discover the planet, they’re going to name it Sam.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from a quote by science journalist Sharon Begley.
> 
> ["Afternoon Delight"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ws0VfqkhFc) by the Starland Vocal Band, with lyrics. (Do not listen to this!)
> 
> Treasure hunt clues: 1973 was the 500th birthday of Polish astronomer Mikołaj Kopernik; the science center (https://www.kopernik.org/) is located in Broome County, New York.


End file.
